An Open Letter to Experts on Chronic Pain who Don’t Have Chronic Pain

Hi there, and thank you for sharing your expertise on chronic pain with me. Oh thank you, you look just fine too. Oh, you think that means I’m not suffering from pain? Well they do call it an “invisible illness” for a reason- yes; it was from that accident many years ago, the bones calloused around a major nerve causing an entrapment. You don’t believe me? You think I must be a malingerer? You’ve seen my x-rays and CT scans and are an expert at reading them, then I suppose.

Oh, you haven’? How silly of me, of course you haven’t!  I had no idea that your street knowledge and guess work was so astute! What was that, you say? Nothing is better than your favorite brand name over the counter medication? That will work? Well, I’m glad it works for you but I’m afraid that my doctor and I both agree that that medication is not strong enough for my pain and if I were to take enough of it to work I would be doing some serious damage to my stomach or liver. They do make stronger medication just for people with painful conditions like mine.

What was that? You think it’s an excuse to take strong pain meds? You think I am a needle craving back alley lurking junkie just shopping for meds, do you? Some kind of slobbering guttersnipe? Thank you for your kind thoughts, but I believe that medicinal information is between me and my doctor. I realize that you think that my doctor must be some uncouth pill pusher, perhaps from the very same back alley you imagine me slathering around in for my next fix.

Oh, I get it; you just don’t think I am trying hard enough to get better. I see what you mean. You think my pony tail is too tight or my hair is too heavy and causing these headaches? You think my breasts are too large and causing these backaches? That I should change my weight? Good Heavens! While I am flattered that you feel that my bosom is ample and my hair long and lovely, I assure you it is not the cause of the headaches, and my doctor hasn’t associated my backaches with my cup size. The weight is an unfortunate side effect of my medication and the unstoppable pain. Some people gain weight, others lose it uncontrollably. Oh, you think I should exercise more? I do what I can, but, yeah the back pain. My doctor said I better lay off that for a while. Yeah, I remember when I was toned and fit too, changing like this definitely wasn’t a conscientious decision, it’s what happens when you are in pain always. Toned and fit, those were the days.

Oh, the pain? Ha! Of course it is all in my head, that is where the pain receptors for the brain resides, you silly goose. And yes my headaches do reside in my head. Do correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m quite sure that is why they are called head-aches.

Tell, me, oh wise one (how I wish I shared your expertise on my condition), why you think it is perfectly fine for someone like you to come along and question my copious amounts of pain whilst never wondering about the pain of a cancer patient. Is it that you believe that cancer is the only thing that can cause serious pain? While I have the utmost sympathy for people that suffer from cancer, I don’t want to demean or belittle those who have serious pain and no cancer. You say I should just get over it? You think my pain is psychosomatic or somatoform in nature? I assure you it is not, and I assure you if I kept my medical records in my pocket I would be happy to share it with you, if it were your business of course. Which it isn’t.  And  unfortunately for you and my pocket, they are a little bit bigger than my grandmother’s photo album and I’m afraid I keep them safely stashed at the doctor’s office.

“Stash” Ha-ha, you don’t miss a thing do you. Yes I have tried Medicinal Marijuana. Yes, it does work for some people, but not for everyone. Strange to have to rely on a drug that helps so many that you can get arrested for. Medicinal marijuana comes in pill form, sprays, as well as the herb, but it doesn’t work for everyone.  Everyone is an individual, you see. Oh really? I have the exact condition as your co-worker’s neighbor’s aunt’s best friend, did I get that right?  They know of an herbal extract that will have me cured within two weeks? I assure you that would be nothing short of a miracle; I will definitely get right on that. I wonder if it makes your brain wonderful and smooth too, like yours appears to be.

Oh you think it must be lovely having all this time off to myself to do with what I wish, do you? Yes, having to make last minute cancellations on appointments and visits with my friends is certainly enjoyable, how I love to spend the day in the dark in bed with pain signals barraging my brain like an army attacking my nervous system, dead as a dodo, aside from the interruptions of retching my guts out. Yes, nerves, I see you caught that too, what a sharp one you are! It is true that the side-effects of constant chronic pain is to not only rattle the sensations but to rattle the nerves too and anxiety and depression are common acquaintances of chronic pain. It does put stress on the coping skills, you’re right. I’m sorry that my change in personality has disappointed you. I don’t enjoy being a nervous wreck either.

But you were talking about the indefinite vacation! It’s great being unable to hold down a job, having no money, not even enough to pay for medical procedures that might make one better. I’d love to be able to work, to have work friends and be able to afford to go to dinners and save up for vacations. In fact I’d be happy without all those things if I could just live a life of normal levels of pain, when things are working as they should and I’m not getting pain for no reason.

Oh the pain clinic you say? That pain clinic? Well sure I’d love to go there, looks like a proper spa it does. But my disability pension does not cover for such luxuries as that. Besides, my doctor said they are really like boot camps for people with newer injuries and their method would be not only ineffective but dangerous as well.

Oh but we mustn’t get your knickers in a stitch, life goes on. Oh, what, so I won’t take any of your suggestions and let you control my life (which I happen to know more about my condition than your 5 minutes of ideas) so you are saying that I like being like this, and my pain isn’t real and I am simply doing this for attention? Well I hope you have a good day then, and I’m sorry I wasn’t able to make it to your awesome party last week.

-N Pearson 07.2012

I'm the Best You're Ever Going to Get (DS2)

So we moved into the little blue and white wartime house in the river valley. Dan wanted to be able to smoke in the bedroom and I don't like smoky sheets so we had seperate bedrooms upstairs, living room and and kitchen on the main floor and computers in the basement.

Things seemed good, but sometimes things would get a bit odd. Dan wanted me to look like this friend he had, Julie. I dyed my hair red for him, and he wanted me to get it permed as well. I would have, except my hair is straight as an arrow and won't curl even if you pay it. The nagging got a bit annoying, he kept trying to make excuses why I should curl my hair when I actually couldn't. I would have if it were possible. "It will tangle less" he'd say, I knew that wasn't a fact. He asked his friends and they sided with me. He nagged less about it, but he started talking about this girl more and more. I guess that was a sign I missed, or more accurately, didn't know at the time.

He began to talk about this girl insessantly, and I'd just sort of half-listen because I wasn't really interested. On hindsight, I think he was trying to provoke jealousy in me. "Oh Julie likes this sort of thing and Julie does that, maybe you can do that?" I don't know why he wasn't dating her instead, since he seemed so obsessed. But I didn't let it bother me.

Then came the jealousy. He would provoke it in himself, asking me questions about my ex's. I didn't really give him too much information since I didn't really see that it was any of his buisness, but it soon became a bit nuts because he was asking me about guys I was friends with or didn't even know.

The questioning turned into interrigation, but again I didn't give it any mind; I was used to crazy accusations from growing up with my mom twisting facts to make things my brother did my fault, again, it was all in my realm of normalcy.

He started making up stories about people gossiping about me. That worried me some, because I  didn't think anyone had any reason to. He started to have temper tantrums, and I was sort of already "conditioned" to be a fixer, and try and fix what was wrong to stop the tantrum. The cycle of abuse had begun.

He started to do strange things. Against my wishes, he let other people move in with us. Our mutual friend, Brad, which wouldn't have been bad except if I got caught talking to Brad, as soon as Dan and I were alone, there would be hell to pay. It turned out Brad was a pig. He smoked in the non smoking areas of the house and used my plants as an ashtray, they all started to wither. He wouldn't use a cutting board and my nice solid wood table got cut marks in it. He used our towels and we caught scabies from him. Dan wouldn't make him move out. Brad would break in through the windows. I constantly got accused of flirting with him. It was exausting.

He started to say I hadn't paid my share of the bills (so I had to pay twice, thus paying the full bill). He'd go out on drinking binges with his friends and come home angry. He limited what friends I could have to 3. He lied and said he was communicating with my parents. If I questioned him he would get very threatening and go "don't you trust me?" I didn't dare deny him when he spoke like that. I knew that tone all too well.

When he was angry, he wanted sex. Or when he wanted sex, he became angry. I would generally be in the basement on the computer or somewhere else in the house when I heard "Nicky! Come here right now!" So I didn't really know which way it went. Everyone likes being talked to like that, right? Being a normal person, I didn't want to have sex with someone who was in a rage. Back then, no one knew about "rageaholism" (a stupid term for a serious condition), but the more he was refused, the more it fuled his paranoia and jealousy (I belive his logic was that since I wasn't ready to jump on him I was "getting it" from somewhere else, rather than simple distate for his behavior.)

I don't remember the first time he laid a hand on me but at first he had put his hands on my shoulders if I recall properly. He'd get raging mad and be babbling some rediculous thing about some guy I barely knew and his face would get all screwed up and he'd look like a hamster. It was hard to take him seriously and I'd have to stifle myself from laughing because the stories and the look on his face was so perposterous. I think the rediculousness of it made it easier to take, or made me immune somehow because I didn't really lacth on to the seriousness of it until the shaking turned to choking and I realized that I was deciding to get beaten up rather than endure nasty sex with him where he's humiliate and insult me. "I'm the best you're ever going to get, you'll never do better than me. I mean just look at you." I'd stare at the clock. At least it was only six minues. But it was a long six minutes. I didn't want to participate to make it last longer so I stared at the clock, the ceiling... the clock...."

Then he invited his brother and brothers girlfriend to live with us. That was probably the best time because Dan wouldn't act abusive when they were around. But if they were out and Dan came home drunk and the house was empty, things would be twice as intense.

Then he decided he was infertile. Which of course meant he didn't want to wear condoms. I couldn't take the pill because of medical reasons so it was barrier methods. We'd made an agreement before we were ever intimate that if there was an accidental pregnancy, that there would be a termination. I didn't want to be a single mom. I started to use a diaphraghm and contraceptive foam. We were down from using 3 barriers to two and I was pretty uncomfortable with this since I wasn't really wanting to do this anyway. I thought it was something you had to do. I didn't have the money to get out of this situation. I'd phoned my mom and asked for help and said it was an emergancy, that I just needed money for a damage deposit so I could move, and she said that "it wasn't an emergancy, and I chose my bed now I have to sleep in it."

I told Tim about the abuse. There was a fight. The Police were called. Dan accused me of strange things with his brother Tim. To the police he said Tim and I had been kissing and to some friends he said Tim had been touching my breasts. It was all crazy fabrications.He couldn't even keep his crazy story straight. Dan was good with the police. Tim spent the night in jail. It should have been Dan.

I started to think of ways to get out. By then I had Pteri, my parrot, and I had to think of her safety too. He would hurt her if I went to a shelter.


Dan had graduated to shaking me by the neck and screaming something incomprehensable about some guy I did an art project with once. We'd talked about doing a road trip out to the country and photograph the powerlines that looked like crosses. Christian crosses. That was some hot and heavy stuff right there. Then I had the realization. This was happening now about 3 times a week. If this didn't stop, this was going to be my life. I didn't want this to be my life. Dan must have seen something in my face or in my eyes change because he became really psycho and started pressing really hard on my throat so I took a few steps back until I was backed up againsat the wall. I was in my "happy place" when I was snapped out of it with him shreiking "...look at my eyes! Don't look at me did I tell you to look at me! You're nothing! Your hair is all going to fall out! You're going to get fat! I'm the best you're ever going to get! Why aren't you looking into my eyes! What are you hiding!" the pressure was releived off my neck and I inhaled and then I was smashed into the wall. The back of my head impacted, hard, then my jaw slammed closed so hard I fractured a tooth and my eyes nearly popped out of my head. "Dan... stop it. You're hurting me."

Immediately he became like a baby bird, a small weak thing. He ran over to the sofa and started sobbing. Sobbing for his mommy. I felt an overwhelming compassion for him, he was so broken and miserable, I instintively followed hm over there with the intent to nurture and comfort him. I started to stroke his hair. A voice, maybe of reason, spoke to me: "What are you doing, 2 seconds ago he tried to kill you."

"Why are you crying?" "I can't control you. No matter what I do, no matter how hard I try, I can't control you." I was a bit baffled. "Why would you want to do that?" I asked. He just sobbed. I put down the lock of hair and walked into the kitchen. I don't remember anything after that.

Surely it can't get any worse than this

Christmas came. His favorite holiday. We decorated the tree, I'd had made origami animals from John Montroll's Animals designs, they were so complcated that had to be folded with foil paper and some took as long as four hours a piece to do. They looked awesome with the colored lights and the different colours of foil paper.

Dan went out more and more often. I tried to drive home to my mom how scared I was by mailing her the christmas ornaments I'd made as a small child. One night I went out to the car to drive up the hill and get some milk from the 7-11, and the tire was flat. He admitted the next day to doing it. "What did Nen say?" I asked. "He thought it was a pretty stupid thing to do." At least he was ashamed.

I don't know what set him off but one night he came home raving drunk and screaming. He took a big carving knife out of the kitchen and was whirling it around, not even making intelligable words. I got him to put away the knife. Somehow. It was like wrangling wasps. The he went after the tree. He picked it up by the base and swung it around the living room. Water splashed everywhere and the cord fortunately was pulled out of the wall preventing an electrical fire. He dragged the tree outside, screaming in tongues. I barricaded myself with Pteri in my bedroom.

The next morning he was very hungover and very bashful. "I ruined your tree. I ruined Christmas."  I didn't have anything to say to him. I tried to wipe the melted candy cane off my origami treasures and packed them away in a bag.

"I'm a lover, not a fighter", he'd say. "I don't abuse women, I've never hit a woman." "Sure," I thought, "but you'll do everything else." It was hard not to roll my eyes. he went on, "I love you, and I'm the best thing you'll ever get, it doesn't get better than me." He was flaunting himself again, in a good mood because he'd gotten what he wanted. He was in an unusually good mood lately. As if he had something up his sleeve. This was going on March.

I decided there was a 4rd option. Whe he was having an episode I couldn't run from the house, he's grab me and do the choking thing. I wouldn't succomb to the shaking. I wouldn't succomb to the rape. I locked myself in my bedroom and I took a plank off my brick and board bookshelf and I wedged it under the doorhandle. I sat on my bed in the corner of the room and wrapped my blankets around me. He swore. He screamed. He demanded. He shouted ultamatiums. He.. he started to bang on the door. First with his fists, then his palms, then you could tell my the tone it was his arms then he started ramming the door with his shoulder. The door couldn't handle that. It began to give. It splintered. It cracked. It shattered at the edge and the door opened, hinges first. It was like The Shining. I was never so terrified in my life. I was petrified. He smashed all the things on top of my dresser. My nautilis shell, one of the only things I had from my dad, shattered. Dan got his way on my bed. I thought the damage to the house would be proof that I needed help to get away. Dan had clearly done this dance before. He said I was crazy, and that he thought I was going to kill myself, and that he'd saved my life.

I felt bloated. I felt unfamiliar. My breasts felt strange. I squeezed one and a few drops of translucent white fluid emerged. I went to get a pregnancy test. It was positive.

I finally found someone that would take Pteri and my other animals and I in without a damage deposit, some work colleagues of my stepdad's who also owned horses where Foxy lived. We'd ride together quite a bit.

When I told him, Dan was very smug. "I poked a hole in your diaphraghm." I ran upstairs. It was true, there was a pinhole dead in the center.When he saw me looking at it, he laughed.

Janet said she would support me and take me to the clinic. First I had to get an ultrasound because it was already late in the trimester, they had to determine wheather it was first or second trimester. I had gotten spotting every four weeks and assumed it was my period so I didn't know.

They made me look at the ultrasound. I made myself not care. I didn't want to be glued to Dan the whole rest of my life. I wanted to get away, clean and even.

On Nen's advice, Dan had suddenly become pro-life. I told him that was bullshit, and he couldn't make that decision at the last minute like that.

Dan was still trying to get me to stay with him. I went out with him and his friends to their bar. Some of these guys were my friends before Dan and I got together, they'd met through me. Dan was emploring, begging me to stay with him. I told his friends in front of him that the door broken down was his temper and I wouldn't back down until he got psychological help for his temper. I didn't have any plans to stay with him anyway. I don't know why I was there. I guess I missed the old "us".

I dropped him off at home. He grabbed the papers for the procedure the next day and darted into the house. I bolted after him. He locked the door but I used my key and my strength to get one arm and my knee and foot stuck in the door. It started to thunder and rain. Dan twisted my arm behind my back, behind the door. I was jammed there. We were pretty equal strengthwise, but he had the leverage advantage. I used the same philosphy I use on horses, I sat there and waited. He was pressing really hard and using up all his energy. A car rolled by. "Help!" I yelled, but they must not have been able to hear in the thunderstorm. Every 10 minutes or so Dan would soften and I would try and gain the advantage. All I managed to do was get more of my leg stuck in the door. It felt like ages, felt like hours. I was cold, wet, tired, fatigued and my muscles were sore from being held in an uncomfortable position. Finally once Dan softened and I managed to pull away. He slammed my lower arm in the door frame. Let me out! He let me pull the rest of my arm out. I almost lost my balance from the muscle fatigue and he saw an oppurtunity and pushed me off the side of the front steps. Things went in slow motion for me as my head avoided the concrete gutter.

I found the nearest phone booth and called the police.

It took them a little while to arrive. They were impolite, rude, condescending, just like I would later learn they always were. I thought they would matter of factly take me up to the station and photograph the bruises and press charges. They got the papers for me. "Are you sure you want to press charges?" They may as well have tagged "little girl" on the end, from the tone of their voice. I couldn't stand it. I even had his hand print perfectly imprinted in mu upper arm in a bruise, the evidence was so obvious. It was as if the last whiff of strength left my body. "I just want to go home." I got into my car and went to Janet and Gord's.

The next day at 9:30 am Janet took me to the Morgenthaller Clinic to have 1/2 of Dan removed from my uterus. The Counsellers there by law had to explain to me birth control and simple things like that, but I think they went easy on me when I told them what had happened with the sabatoged diaphraghm and the rapes.

The procedure was horrible, but at least it was over, and afterwards I had a warm dry safe bed to sleep in.

Later I learned I had entrapped nerves in my neck and bony lipping growing towards my spinal column in the middle of my C 4 and 5 vertibrae from the shaking. I'll always be in pain from this.

Noise Through The Walls (DS1)

It was about 1994 and I was moving on from John. I was going to a gig at a bar on top of a highrise at the Uni. I sat with some aquaintences, Nen and his friend Dan. Dan started to flirt with me, he bent a paperclip into a croude ring and put it on my finger. I thought this was cute, and he seemed to have a good sense of humor and liked that I had a horse and pets.

Our first date was my brother's wedding reception. I don't remember the wedding itself. I was excited that I would have a sister, something I've longed for.

Dan and I became inseperable. He was working at the time at a drive through, and I'd give him a rose instead of paying.

Some people told me that they didn't like him and that they saw bad signs in him. I didn't see anything, so I was confused why they would say such things. I asked what they meant and they wouldn't say anything, as if it was blatently obvious. It wasn't.

I mean, his sense of humor was dorky and self-flattering and sometimes obnoxious, but that described 99% of all guys I'd met. It Just seemed normal.

We'd stay up all night and eat tortillas and watch (old) Dr. Who and Red Dwarf and infomercials till dawn broke, things were very simple and straight foreward compared to John. I wasn't stunned by his intellect and knowledge, he was a pretty straight foreward guy.

Someties he'd make up weird anecdotes to puff himself up, but I didn't mind. One was something about him working in a pharmacy and a woman had an asthma attack at the front of the store and her lips were turning blue and so he ran to the back of the pharmacy and vaulted the counter and grabbed some ventalin and administered it to the poor, semi conscious woman and saved the day. He saved the day a lot, but I didn't care, it just seemed to be a cute harmless quirk.

At the time I was living on 107th Ave, a nasty part of town with lots of drugs and crime. I was very fed up with the landlords, who had installed screen windows in such a way that it would take an Exacto knife to enter my apartment, and I had an ex, Brian, that had been stalking me. He kept climbing up on the hood of my car onto my patio and trying to get in my place that way. In that area, the police didn't care.

I had neighbours that would have loud, obnoxious parties with plenty of shouting, fighting, banging around and lots of loud sex. Frequently I'd hear women, their girlfriends, I assumed, shouting back at them and the banging and sex would ensue. Calling the police on a late night noise complaint was futile, it didn't matter in that area.

I was working to the East at the new College as a lab assistant in the Biology lab. The lab job was great, in addition to taking care of the animals, I got to do cool things like hatch praying mantids, and stay late drawing and painting specimens. It was the best job I'd ever had, I could set up the class, go fro a swim in the pool and come back in time to tear down the lab and set up the next class and go to my own class. In addition I was  doing a diploma in Psych to get closure on John's death. I thought I was handling it pretty well, it was 2 years ago. Dan came to my work and I let him in the lab. He wanted to "move another step in the relationship" and move in together. I told him I'd think about it. Something made me a little apprehensive. He seemed to nag about it a lot.

Everyone said not to do it. No one would explain why. I didn't get it. One friend, who I'd been crushing on for years, warned me away from him. I told him if this is a jealosy thing to let me know before I made a real commitment. He said it wasn't like that.

One night the fighting and partying was much louder and more intense than other nights. I put my pillow over my head but it still didn't muffle the sound. I tried the police again. The tired dispatcher said the would send someone out, but "it might be a while". I knew by then that meant no one was coming. Somehow I managed to drift off.

The next day I was finishing an old guitar for a fixer upper that someone had given me, the laundry room was a great place to do woodworking as long as I wasn't too loud (the irony was not lost) and I cleaned up the shavings and sawdust after. The landlord came in the laundry room and asked if I'd heard any strange noises last night. I told him that it was the same as every weekend, shouting and sex and banging, same as I'd told him before. I guess they went too far that time, turned out that one of the brothers had OD'd on coke that night and died. It was hookers they were bringing in the apartment, and something had gone wrong.

This was bad. The death was too close, too close to John and I couldn't stand it. The next week when I was staying late painting in the lab and Dan came by and brough up the topic of moving in together I said "Ok, let's get a house in Rossdale, I always wanted to live near the Folk Festival." And so it began.

We rented a little 2 story wartime house just a block from the Folk Fest Entrance. It was going to be awesome. Things were looking up.

Emotion is a Pejoritive (John I)

It's not "Awe, don't cry", it's "don't cry or you will regret it."

Stuff it down, keep a stiff upper lip.

I met John working in a guitar store when I decided I was good enough of a player that I wanted to get a nice bass. Then, acoustic bass guitars weren't made, so I was recommended to a place that would make me a custom one for the price of a moderately decent factory made guitar.

We hit it off immediately, it was like we were made to be together. We both were artists and introverts and we both had our ways of working out and being healthy and everyone said we were a "good looking couple". The ex was jealous, telling everyone that John had "stolen me away from him" as though I was his property and actually shaved his long hair bald to be a complete drama queen, all this and we had broken up for very good reason four months before John and I became a couple.

John had a fallout with his boss at the guitar store and bought a studio to work in and there I learned to identify and carve and bend exotic woods: indian rosewood and purple heart and red mahogany and madicasar ebony. I learned to carve soapstone and cut inlays out of mother of pearl and abalone.

Freelancing as a luthier wasn't going as well as he'd expected but he did as well as he could and we'd enjoy long weekend days window shopping at our favorite hobby stores: the place that sold stones of all kinds from carvable soapstone and alabaster, the exotic hardwood store run by a sweet couple, Herman and Marie, and the aquarium shop where we would dream one day of having a huge discus tank.

I was 20 then and doing my first year of college, doing fine arts. John was 27 and told me all about the midevil artists like Hieronamous Bosch and Albrecht Druer. He built his instruments with a heavy Celtic accent to them, I learned how to do Celtic braids and knots for the soundhole designs.

I became very very attached. It seemed we were joined at the soul, because I could just imagine where he was and go there and he would be there, even though I'd never seen him at this place before, and we hadn't made plans to meet.

He took on a full time job working at a home for the handicapped, and time went on. He started doing a live in job with a single handicapped man on the weekdays, so I didn`t see him much. He invited me to come to a local hang out where these guys were often, but the times I would go were uncomfortable with the guys making remarks about my body and touching me and stuff.

Around the time this happened, John became very jealous and stuff. I just dismissed it as normal, since other boyfriends I`d had had their jealous, posessive moments, but this was a bit strange. He moved into a house a block away from my bachelor apartment and he would call at 9:30 every morning and night.

Christmas came, we had been seeing each other about a year and a half now. We talked about getting married and where we would live and such. He didn`t have enough money for a ring, but was going to get one.
Things weren't perfect, John was ever more and more demanding in bed. Nothing I did lasted long enough for him and I'd do my best to the top of my pain tolerence. Maybe I'm a lightweight but 20 or 25 minutes of BJ was all I could handle. I didn't think it was a problem, we were together whever he had time away from work.

He started to drink, heavier and heavier. "Green Chartruse," he said. "It's made my monks." He would get absoutely plastered on the stuff and microbrewery ale. A few times I had to practiclly carry him to my apartment where he would pass out in the bathtub. He seemed to have an obsession with bathtubs.

I went to the Christmas party at the home for the handicapped where John worked, and one of the clients had invited one of my friends. It was warm and nice and I had that rare I belong, feeling that I always wish for that I don`t get from my family, but I think thats what most people get. I helped out out the platters and listened to jokes and laughed and did their dishes and really felt for the first time in a long time that I belonged somewhere. Once the dishes were done, one of the female staff pulled me aside and asked what I was still doing there.
``What do you mean? I'm here with the other guests and we are having a nice time I think"
"You're not one of the guests and you will have to leave."
I went white, then red.  The room shrunk and suddenly felt cold. "But I've been a good guest and helping out and I even did your dishes."
"Yeah, we were kind of wondering why you did that. Now you have to leave."
"But I am John's guest."
"Staff don't get guests" this wasn't true, there were family of staff there.
I asked Jason, then Brian, both CP survivors who I had taken on trips and  gone out with. Neither would make eye contact with me and both of then shook their heads.
"Come on Michelle, we're going." "But I'm a guest here, just come and get me when the party's over." "I'm not a cab driver," I said "you can come now or find your own way home." She was mad at me. It was me, after all, that convinced her to come to this party in the first place. "You see, this is why I don't like John," she said. "I don't follow..." "Isn't it obvious? He's cheating on you."  But the words didn't sink in, the rolled off into the winter wind. Quiet in the car. "John would never cheat. We are in love."

Things were still going on at the studio, I was getting good at carving and was doing the head stocks and the heels on the guitar necks as well as making little wooden and soapstone animals.

John was becoming strange though. He and his boss at the guitar shop had had a bad parting of ways, and there were disagreements on who owned what tools. John would tell me that the owner had a man come in the night with a dog and there was a fight, and that he killed the dog with a pipewrench. There was no blood outside. John was becoming delusional from stress.




John Would Never Cheat

We were together and it was early spring. Things were just getting intimate and he took down his pants and... shaven. Bald. Everything. "Sherry said you would like it." "Sherry? Your boss?" "Yeah well you don't like going down, she said you would like this." "John, I have a broken skull. I'm doing the best that I can, but it hurts me." I've never seen such of look of horror on a person's face, ever. It was as though I'd hit ho or something. He locked himself in the bathroom. I realized the levity of what he meant. He'd been fucking his boss. I was floored.

I asked why that happened. John said "They don't like you." I didn't understand. I was nice to them, they had accepted my invitations out... "You use too big of words." Well that's stupid I thought. "John, you are jealous of every move I make. You accuse me of things I haven't done, and it turns out you were the one doing it. Those guys... they touch me and they make lewd remarks about me. You're the jealous one, you should be noticing this and protecting me from those goons." He looked like a scolded child. "But they like Sherry?" I realized that this handicapped guy was being very self serving. By welcoming Sherry into his house he had 2 caretakers for the price of one. This guy had shitty values.

Things weren't the same after that. I couldn't touch him. I couldn't leave him. I couldn't talk to him. I was traumatised. John began to get more and more despondant. Hindsight was 20/20, I knew now why i was kicked out of the Christmas party. Months went by, and nothing seemed to change. My heart and my trust had been broken.

My friends invited me over for games and drinks. I overdrank and the room was spinning and so they put me into Michael's bed to cool off. Michael came in the room and was saying something to me, sympathzing. I was barely conscious. Just as Penny came in the room to check on us, Mike reached out and touched my breast. "Mike!" Penny yelled, snapping me out of my state for a minute. I felt violated and used in so many ways



I knew Everything Would Be Alright from then on

One day I got home from school and there were valentines all over my apartment. JN+NP, bookmarked in books, written on the bathroom mirror in lipstick, on the windows in soap, on the walls, on my denim jacket, 80's style. 


John and I went on our usual Saturday route to the craft and hobby stores and the reptile and aquarium shop. It was a really nice day. After I dropped him at his house so I could go and ride my horse. "I love you" he said. "I love you too." "Things have been really hard, but they will be better from now on." I thought he was talking about Sherry, that he's told her to go take a hike. "I'm glad" I said.
"but you never come over to my house, you don't spend time with the guys at the deli."
"Those guys touch me and make lewd remarks, you are the posessive one, why aren't you doing something when they do that? As for coming over, you never invite me over. You have told me that you didn't want me there. I can come over now, and ride my horse later."

Silence. "Do you need to go to the hospital?"

"No, it's too late. Everything will be ok from now on. I love you."

"I love you too. I will see you later."

I went on my ride with Foxy, and I felt something strange like a wisp. Fox seemed to have felt it too, because he spooked at nothing and smashed my knee into the wooden fence. I didn't cry often but I suddenly started to sob, not because of the pain, but because John was dead. I pulled myself out of that weird feeling. "You're just imagining things because of the weird talk."

John didn't make his usual 9:30 call that night, nor did he in the morning. I assumed he was making a final breakup with Sherry and thats what he meant by everything being ok. Then the phone rang. It was the rude handicapped client wanting to know where John was. "He's not with you?" Suddenly I remebered my premonition from the previous day and my blood ran cold. "Check and make sure none of your medications are missing, please" I waited some time and he came back and said no they weren't. I went across the road and knocked on the door. No answer. I knock on his landlord's door and tried to convince him to open it to check on John. He reminded me of the 24 hour privacy rule, and wouldn't comply. I went back home and called the police. They said they would come.

They arrived after about 1/2 an hour and got the unhappy landlord to unlock the door. I got dizzy and told the policeman that I would be back, I just needed my medicine. When I got back to John's house, an ambulence was there. The police asked if I knew of any ways that John might have killed himself. What a horrible thing to put through someone's imagination. "Um he works with handicapped people and might have gotten some pills, and he has a woodshop, I can't even think of what he could have done with tools..." the cop had me sit down on the curb. "9 out of 10 times when someone thinks that someone has committed suicide, they are wrong, the person has just gone for a walk." That seemed wrong to me, the ambulance... "but 1 out of 10 times the person is right and this is one of those times." I got mad. I threw my keys into the middle of the parking lot. I got mad again because the keys didn't fly nearly far enough for the amount of emotion I was going though. They should have circled the globe and smashed through every window along the way.

I started at a raindrop that was hanging under a blade of grass. It was like I was tiny, like an ant, and I could stare up at this raindrop, left over from last night's storm. I could see the police car and the ambulence and the ENT's rolling the covered gurney out of the house towards the ambuence in perfect detail, but upside down. The drop shook loose from the blade of grass and rolled into the depths of the lawn.

Braids of Contemplation

I've been told to write about my life. A lot. From people that know a bit about me and what I've been through to fans of my mom to psychologists. Problem is I never knew where to start. Do I do it chronologically? Do I do it by assigning each person a chapter? Do I make it fiction story? How do I approach all this?

I decided that I'll decide that later, and I'll just get all my junk down first. The snippets from the thread of my life can all be aligned together and braided, and we'll see if a pattern emerges. As long as it doesn't end up as Vogon Poetry in the long run, then we will be ok.

The Best Day Ever

It was the end of summer break in 1986, and I was about to return for my final year of high school, Grade 12. The trees were losing their summer emerald green and starting to take on the olive green they get before they turn gold in the fall.It had been a good summer, I got to lease a horse, Beejay, and ride him whenever I wanted. Cute little black quarter horse.

But now... now I had just gotten the best news a horse obsessed girl could get. See, four years ago we went to go and see a newborn filly, only 4 days old. She was an appendix quarter horse (which means she had thoroughbred blood) and a deep golden palomino with a star and one stocking on her back leg. I had the cutest photos of her. She became my dream horse.

But now, four years later, her owner was going on Sabbatical and needed someone to care for her horses for 6 months. In some sort of twist of fate, my parents actually agreed that I could take her to my boarding stable and she would be just like my ow horse for 6 months. Nothing could go wrong, it was the best thing ever.

So we drove the hour or so to South Cooking Lake to the little farm with the four horses: the big bay appy showjumper, the grey old cobby mare, and Solitaire and her mum. The horse trailer hadn't arrived yet, so we put a bridle on Tara and I got a leg up onto her bare back. Apparently no one had thought that I would need a saddle. But I was 17 and confident and I has my mom to myself for the day and the sun was shining interspersed with puffy little clouds.

I straightened my helmet, it was a few sizes too big for me but we'd stuffed the inside of the brim with tissues to make it stay on, it was a bit wobbily, but it was all I had. I rode Tara around in a small circle at a walk and then a figure eight at a trot. This was hard for me, just about all my riding experience had been in weekly lessons in an arena, plus the month with Beejay, and my bareback riding was minimal. There is a huge difference between being held snugly in place with a comfortable saddle on an experienced school horse and balancing on the wriggley hide of a greenbroke filly with 30 days training.

Mom wanted to see me go faster, and that sounded like fun so I thought I'd take Tara down the little hill and canter her back up. I turned her towards the hill and it was like she didn't want to go. I asked her again, using a bit of leg and rein and trotted her down the hill.

Tara's mom neighed. The horse van arrived and rattled. Tara whirled around back towards her mum and dropped her shoulder and I lost balance and slid down a bit down her neck. My helmet fell off and rolled down the hill, uselessly. I wasn't able to get back up and fell to the ground.... Bright Yellow. Dandilion Yellow, Lemon Yellow, Yellow Like the Sun. Palomino Yellow. Every Yellow there is filled my vision.

I was lying face down in the dirt. I lifted my head up, kind of embarassed that I'd fallen in front of the owner and the trailer driver. There was blood in the dirt. "Shit" I said. "Nicola!" I hear my mom shieking and her running towards me. "We're going to the hospital." The... what? I tried to touch my face by my mom pulled my wrist away. "Keep your hands away... don't touch your face." I didn't get it. My mom drove the car and backed it up to me and I was really weak for some reason and only managed to get into the back of the stationwagon. Mom drove very urgently. She stopped at the next farm, some other people we knew by cooincidence. "I'm goingto try and get you some ice." We drove up the bumpy road to the next farm. The bumps were very uncomfortable. Luckily, someone was home and we got a bag of ice. They stood there inspecting me and discussing what to do. I felt very embarassed. My face itched. I tried to touch my face again and my mom grabbed my wrist again and said that it was very important that I don't touch my face. We left the farm and started the hour long drive to the hospital.

I sneaked touching my face while my mom was driving. my nose was flat and for some reason when I went straight up I could feel my left eye. That wasn't right. Left of my nose was too sore to touch. I tenatively felt over to the right and felt the edge of torn skin and felt a strong gut feeling to keep my hand away. I laid in the back of the station wagon and tried to focus on the clouds in the sky, but everything was blurry.

Finally we got to the hospital. They put me on a gurney and rolled me straight in, and I thought "wow I must be bad". There was blood trickling into my ears and I kept needing to wipe them and they kept swatting my hands and saying don't touch your face. I must have been unable to speak because they just ignored me saying "my ears are itchy". They put in an IV and must have put some strong painkiller in there because nothing hurt. It didn't hurt in the car, either. I lied there patiently while the doctors and nurses fiddled and mussed around my face. My stepdad arrived at some time. I was glad my brother wasn't around.

We went to X-ray. The technician said there was two things he hated, that was horses and baseballs. I didn't like the technician.

 A nurse, Ron or Rob came in and I was to hold his hand. They said they were going to do something that would be "a little uncomfortable". They couldn't put me to sleep cause I might go into a coma.

My parents said they were going to go for coffee.  They left on me.

A bunch of nurses and doctors surrounded me. My arms were tied down. Rob held my hand. Some people were putting their hand on either side of my scalp. "Ready" went a mans voice and they started pusking my nose. "noooo don't...." they pushed harder. I held Rob's hand tight, so tight, I was going to break the bones in his hands. The sound of bone crunching against bone. Rob's hands were short and squat and hairy and his nails were wide and flat. Ipressed my feet against each other. More Crunching. I held Robs hands so tight I swear I would have broken anyone else's hands. I wonder if he remembers me now, 25 years later. The kid with the crushed skull. "We had to put your nose back in the middle of your face". At the time I didn't know why I wasn't put under or put out. I was upset my parents abandonded me for this worst thing, my mom was an ER nurse she should have been able to stay. But she didn't.

I guess they did all they could that night and rather than have me stay at the hospital, surprisingly, they sent me home for 2 weeks. The Swelling had to go down enough so they could do surgery. They sent me home with some T3's and a tin barf bowl.

Mom set me up in the basement on the Lazy Boy chair. I was tired and I wanted to lie down in bed. She got ice to put on my face and water to drink and and a bell to ring if I needed them and a huge bowl to puke in. I wasn't allowed to lie down because the blood might pool in my lungs and I would drown in my own blood in my sleep. There were 2 boxes of tissues, a garbage bin, hydrogen peroxide, vaseline, everything. I wasn't go get up and go to the washroom on my own in case I fell. She thought of everything.

I didn't sleep that night, I survived. I worked on getting the godforsaken blood out of my ears but my skin had become super tender and so I had to keep doing it with breaks. During the night ny eyes swelled shut from the broken nose and the eyelashes glued together with blood.

So I got to work, cleaning myself up. Any sip of water was immediately expelled along with clotted blood, there was so much blood I'd swallowed it was unreal. I kept doing it thoughto get rid of the blood from my stomach, it felt like the right thing to do. I gingerly dabbed at my ears and eyelashes with wet tissues and wet Q-Tips, trying to dissolve the dried blood.

I had one bowl for clean water and one for dirty water. Soon the dirty water looked like it was blood as well. I think I eventually got a few hours of sleep.

One of the Worst Days Ever

I don't know why, but news travels fast and my school friends wanted to come and see me. Holy fuck, no! They can't see me like this all nasty with blood everywhere and a fucking Tampax taped under my nose to catch the blood and my whole face practically covered in nasty black stiches.

So 3 friends came over even though I expressley told them I didn't want visitors. I put a shawl over my face to save them from the horror. They kept saying it was ok, that I could take off the shawl and that they are good friends and would be forever (Where are they now? Oh yeah my PAIN was too much for them and they "got on with their lives". One said she didn't like me any more because the pain changed me.) and it was ok and they were sure my face wasn't that bad and I could remove the shawl. So finally I was convinced. One of them gasped. I tried to hold open the corner of one eye to see them (my eyes were swollen completley shut by this time and projected out further then my nose from being full of blood) and I saw their looks of horror. I felt vindicated and hurt at the same time. I replaced the shawl. They made excuses and left.

I went back to cleaning up the blood. I spent 8 days in the chair before my nosebleed was down enough that I could lie down and it took 2 weeks before the swelling was down enough that I could have Reconstructive surgery 1 out of 4, the one where they put the damn wires in (I got as many wires taken out as I could but they can't remove them all and they can't do an MRI of my head because of them).

(My horse was never delivered to the stable, they sold her to someone so I never got closure, never got to tell het I fogive her, never got to say goodbye or pat her. You would think I would deserve at least that.)

What it was really like

What it was really like

Like many other people my age, I used to go to the bar quite often,  to fend off the pain from being under-treated and to fend off loneliness. The bar I went to had an interesting mix of people from various backgrounds; most of them had something interesting to say. I met Robin and his friend by proximity, we just started talking. We had a few things in common, web design, and Robin was from a farm so we talked horses.

This went on for a couple years, it was just small talk, about Monty Roberts the horse trainer, and that sort of thing, all I knew is that his name was Robin, his parents had a Black Angus farm in Saskatewan, and he made the soup bases that went to restaurants like Earl’s. He had short, mousey brown hair, old 80’s style round glasses, ice blue-grey eyes, and a slight acne problem. He was medium built and maybe 5’ 11”.

I’d just gotten out of a bad abusive relationship and was taking some time to myself. Robin asked me if I’d like to go home with him. I said I’d rather not, that it was too soon after this bad boyfriend. He asked me out. Same answer. Besides, there was something “off” about him that I couldn’t put my finger on, but he was a little creepy at times. For example, he told me about a photo he has in his living room of a horse defecating, he said he thought it was funny. I thought that was gross and tasteless but I didn’t think it was reason enough to just dump someone as an acquaintance. I thought he was fine with the “let’s be friends” and the subject was dropped and he didn’t bother e about it again.

At the time I had terrible boundaries. If someone made an off-color joke I would laugh along, I didn’t want to be the wet blanket to stop it. I wanted to be “one of the guys” and accepted… by everyone. I worked very hard at that.

So when he brought a friend from work, I tried to laugh politely about the rape and GHB jokes… but they just didn’t stop. This guy was short and stocky with red hair, unshaven and a green lumber jacket on. Was this guy deliberately trying to push my buttons? I started to object, “I had no sense of humor” and “these were just harmless jokes” and “I don’t actually think they are planning on raping me are they?” I felt ashamed and said no. But they went on and on and became worse and worse. I said to the friend “enough of these jokes. I’m going to the bathroom and when I come back I want the subject changed please”. Stupidest move EVER. I thought Robin was my friend. I thought I could trust him with my drink. It didn’t occur to me that these “jokes” were outlining what my near future was.

I came back and very soon I was feeling very very detached. I remember Robin sort of holding me to him and him telling my friends that I was very drunk and he is just taking me home so I would be safe. My friends said ok.

Next thing I was in his car, a small white coupe with red seats and lots of stickers on it. Then we were in the apartment. He handed me The Man Who Listens to Horses by Monty Roberts. I was sitting on the floor for some reason, trying to take off my boots. It was very difficult.

I woke up out of my body looking down on two people… well… in bed. The bed and sheets were dirty and the room was sparse. There was a desk lamp, a clock and a picture of an arial view of a Black Angus farm on the bedside table. The girl wasn’t moving and looked asleep. Nothing seemed strange about this, I’ve dissassociated before. But what was going on down there? It seemed as though something was wrong… I thought about “Real Dolls”. Real Dolls are anatomically correct mannequins that men use as masturbation aids. I felt dead like a doll. I felt my hip bone get grabbed and I felt vertigo as I was being flipped and a deep cracking sound in my back and… oh my God this is me what is going on here stop this must end immediately. I did not want to be touched by this man. Especially not like this. I felt naked and vulnerable. I was naked and vulnerable. I began to panic. I remember feeling around for my clothes and then I was stuck to the ceiling at the corner of the room again. “Move!” I tried to command by body. I wondered if this was like what it felt like to be a “Real Doll”. Nothing happened, there was just a crumpled up shell being assaulted. It was like being a passenger in your own car with a bad driver at the wheel. “Move get out of there don’t worry about your clothes, run!” No response. I was the puppeteer and the marionette strings had been cut. My back hurt so much where it was snapped, each and every time he moved.

Next thing I knew it was daytime. Maybe 11 am. I got dressed and felt really dizzy and sat down in the hallway. I had no memory of the previous night. I got my riding boots on and I managed to find my way out of the three story walkup apartment, the door opened to a parking lot and past that a hilly park with people sunbathing. It was hard to get oriented but I managed to get home and went to sleep. I threw up a lot. My back throbbed.

It was the following day and I called the Sexual Assault Center. They said that from what I had to say, that it sounded like GHB and they said I could come in later that day to talk to someone. I went into the Pain Clinic. The doctor there examined me. He did a blood test for HIV and a pregnancy test. He asked if I wanted to call the police. See, the thing was, at the time I didn’t know if Robin was guilty; if he knew about the drugs. I figured the red headed friend put the drugs in to play a prank on Robin. I didn’t think Robin would intentionally do such a thing.

What they don’t tell you about disasscociatives like GHB is that the memories come creeping back over time, one puzzle piece by one. Later the key unlocked… the one thing that I needed to know. When I was flipped over was his voice, “Do you like me now, bitch?”

I saw him once. He looked happy to see me. “You drugged me,” I said. He went white as a sheet and ran. Too fast to get the police. Some skank staggered up to me and wagged her head like a chicken and said that he was very sweet and would never do that. I said “Yeah I used to think that too.” She swore at me and staggered back to her chair.

I looked for someone to accompany me to the police for help. Of all people that you think would be there to help you after an incident like this is your mom. Sadly, this is less often the case than we think. My mom was too busy and blamed me for being in the wrong place. Now they call that “victim blaming”. The bartender said “I was really drunk” well duh, that the effect those drugs do on you, give the appearance of extreme inebriation. That not an excuse for rape.

I went between wanting to forget about it, not being ABLE to forget about it because my back hurt so much, and worrying about my responsibility to press charges because of reoccurrence. The system makes it very hard to press charges. I’d had trouble pressing charges with baddan and the cops are rude, condescending, and they question you and your motives. I needed support to go through this.

The Near Death Experience.

This is jumping way ahead, but I kind of want to talk about it now. So we’ll toss any sort of senseical timeline to the wind, and put drips and drops of my life in and maybe eventually they will start to make some sort of sense. Like a puzzle coming together or something. It seems wrong in a way to through this cookie in the pile so early, but I have to get it off my back.

In 2008 I had a Near Death Experience.

Wait, let me back up. I currently live with chronic pain, or the unshortened “non-cancerous multiple-trauma intractable complex chronic pain syndrome with complications”. Basically it means I had a few serious traumas to my body that were bad enough to outweigh my personal toughness and knocked me down into a person I never thought I’d be: I knew I had it tough through life, but I thought I could handle anything they threw at me: broken skull, fiancé suicide, unloving parents and no support system, an extremely abusive relationship, and a violent rape in which I was almost killed. I will go over all of these later.

Still leading up to it, the pain that I was experiencing from the broken skull and two spinal injuries were making it hard to function. I didn’t have a proper pain doctor at the time and my pain was being under treated. I’d get dizzy spells from the pain but I’d brush them off and keep going. The pain though, gave me a general grand mal seizure.

This brought me to the attention of the pain management doctors (finally! It only took 20 years of being in pain to get taken seriously) and one of the meds they tried me on was dilaudid. This worked on the pain well enough but I got severely constipated from it.

Without getting into too much detail, the abdominal pain started to get worse and worse. I started to hallucinate. My friends online convinced me to call 911, and I went to the hospital and after minimal treatment they sent me home. I told them I still felt very sick and wasn’t ready to go home yet, but they sent me in a cab.

Over the next 5 hours the abdominal pain got worse and worse, and I began to get confused. My friends told me to call an ambulance again, I guess I was starting to not make any sense but I only get one ambulance ride per month on my current insurance plan and didn’t want t pick up the $350 bill for it. This example shows how distorted my thinking was: I couldn’t make the decision about getting a life saving ambulance ride and paying $350. Eventually I found that logical track though and called 911 again.

I started to get tunnel vision and they took my vitals (I don’t remember what they were but apparently it was very serious) and they strapped me into the gurney just as my vision started to stretch out into tunnel vision. They asked me if I had anyone to phone, I had frantically searched for the phone number of a long time friend of the family but was unsuccessful at finding it.

We got to the hospital and I was having moments of lucidity but the first strange thing that happened was that I could hear things from very far away: things I would not normally be able to hear. I could hear the conversation between the triage nurse and the EMT perfectly even though there was a lot of commotion between us, it was as if I had a microphone near them so I could block out all the unnecessary noise and tune in on what was relevant for me. The triage nurse turned to look at me and I must have looked a mess because she shielded her eyes and looked away. The look in her eyes was fear. I’ve never seen an ER nurse do this. I knew at this time I was in real trouble. I could hear the nurse say “they never should have let her leave the other hospital”.

Things started to get weird. I know and can recognize hallucinations from reality quite easily, from 25 years of chronic intractable migraine and sometimes certain medications would have some strange side effects. At this point, things weren’t that much different from this.

The floor had dropped away around my gurney; the gurney itself seemed to be about 10 feet high. I needed to use the washroom and required the help of the EMT’s to get off the thing and to walk to the toilet. They stood awkwardly outside with my IV drip kind of going through a crack in the door; the bathroom was too small to accommodate the IV pole. I cleaned up and getting back onto the gurney was much easier than getting down despite how weakened I was.

I was obsessed about thoughts of my parrot, Pteri, she had a real fright from the EMT’s coming in and clomping around the living room and testing my blood sugar by making my bleed (and filling the room with blood smell) and she had fallen off her perch in fright. I had the notion that she had broken a blood feather in her tail and was bleeding out. That started to become an obsession, I didn’t have anyone to call to feed and water my animals so I mustn’t die because they will slowly die from being starved of food and water. A recent night terror kept returning to me of me holding Pteri’s limp dead body in my arms while emergency workers buzzed around me. At least my horse would be ok; he was at a boarding stable.

The pain was surreal. I think I had told the EMT that it was a “15” on the 1-10 pain scale, and my blood pressure and pulse were very abnormal. I was sure that this had all been a ruse, that having been in chronic pain for 20 years had made me a nuscience and that “they” were trying to kill me since I mattered to no one. Yes, that was it. The Dilaudid Overdose, all this, they were going to kill me.

I was wheeled to a corner cubicle in the ER with the curtain pulled open so that the nurses could keep an eye on me. An ECG was applied, and they brought painkillers which I refused because I thought any little bit of morphine would put me over the edge and I would die for sure.

So I Rode The Pain.

The Louge Ride

Things stretched out horizontally, forever. Time slowed. I was in a tunnel, and I was accelerating at a tremendous rate, the G-Force was really heavy. The Nurse Triage stretched away from me, miles away, light-years away; although just like the sound trick it was also right up close if I focused on it. Things were becoming very crazy. I focused on the triage and crossed my arms in front of me and rocked and murmured “I must stay alive, I must stay alive, I must stay alive, I must stay alive” in 4’s like that. It became a song. I quietly chanted it as I rocked back and forth and held on to the sides of the gurney alternating with holding myself as the gurney sped along close to the speed of light. I was seeing double, and everything was slowed down, I watched a nurse walking towards me in slow motion, he looked like a statue, mid stride. Everything became animated looking, that is it was as if reality had animation or movie frames. The tunnel began to get twists and turns in it so I had to hold the rails so that I wouldn’t fall off. I was speeding along like Eleanor Arroway in the wormholes in Contact, only the tunnel looked like clear warped glass or water or something, distortions of the real world.

The “blue tunnel” appeared sometime around now, it was blindingly bright and it was pulling like a vacuum on my sternum area. I turned my back to it, if I acknowledged it I’d be vacuumed up. I thought of my friends online worrying about me, not knowing what was going on.

The main tunnel in front of me started to branch out, small capillaries coming out of the main one. The tube became larger and larger and soon they were large enough that I was able to one way or the other, I had no control. The mood of things started to go from surreal to sinister. A scuttling started in the pit around the gurney, and I had the sense that there were creatures down there, looking part wolf and part human, grey with no fur and glowing red eyes. Since I wasn’t taking the blue tunnel up, they started waiting for a FEEDING.

The lucid part of me thought this was very interesting. I was hallucinating but I could analyze it. I was getting a guided tour of the world between life and death. Most people get Near Death Experiences when they are unconscious and low on oxygen or whatever, I was awake and things were going on and I was able to communicate. I was however trapped in the tunnel going at an enormous rate of speed. From across the room I could hear the EMT listing my meds, he kept saying “MS Contin”, and at the time I was on “CS Contin” and I would shout out and correct him. He kept saying that he couldn’t understand how I could be lucid with the vitals I had, or how I could hear them talk. He was very sweet, he walked by my gurney three times to see how I was, and I’d say “I’m not dead yet” and he’d deny walking past to check in on me.

I started to get tested. The tunnels’ capillaries arteries became big enough to travel through, and so I would go one way or the other by thinking the direction. When I would go through the splits in the tunnels I would get an image of my double vision and I had to choose which the “right” one was. They were identical. The first 5 or so time I chose the right path and was rewarded with a serene image of a forest in the summer with sunbeams visible and the sound of life everywhere, insects and birds and frogs, very warm and peaceful. The next time the right direction was the “wrong” decision and I was startled with a close-up face, ashen grey with a ghoulish grin of Schadenfreude, broken teeth and a mouthful of blood grinning right in my face. “Rape face”, I’ve heard it called. Someone so impaired with bloodlust that they are enjoyment at making someone suffer so that they aren’t even noticing their injuries.

The demons face was so startling and so naturally the next time I chose the left path. Demon again, laughing at my pain. I started to search for differences in the images on the double vision. Was one brighter then the other? More colorful? A different but close animation frame? Some small difference in the images? In the split second I was viewing these “photos” of reality I had to decide which the “good” image was and which the “bad” one was. The demon face was gathering more and more power each time I accidently selected it. The tunnels were getting bigger and faster. I must have been approaching light speed for nearly an hour by now, and the forest and the face images were become more and more tangible, as was the blue tunnel above me. I had my back to the blue tunnel and its vacuum effect, I was not ready to go up it and the best way was to not acknowledge it. That was the fastest path to death. I wasn’t ready to go there.

I imagined Pteri’s water drying out and her waiting for someone to refill her water dish and dying, trapped in her cage. I imagined that Pteri had already bled out through the broken blood feather and already died. These were all very real to me.

I knew it was of utmost importance to focus on reality or I might never escape this crazy nightmare. The “slideshow” became more and more frequent, soon I was micromanaging my heartbeats by guessing the right or wrong picture of my double vision. A huge tunnel approached and the gravity of it made me go faster and faster. I was using logic to try and figure out the right picture, was one brighter, was one smoother, was one more crisp, was one slightly different? This one had a sense of urgency to it. I guessed in the large tunnel and there was glee all around me, the teeth and the bloody ghoulish grin. The dog things below got very excited. I heard my older niece’s voice saying “Auntie Nicky is going to Heaven!” They were so young that’s what they thought death meant. “No no no” I thought “this isn’t right.” I thought about my friends and Pteri and my other pets and my horse and my loved ones… and I fell out of the grip.

We are not designed to go backwards in time. Vein’s valves are not designed for blood to go the other way, you can’t un-digest food, things just don’t go backwards. We are designed for linear 1 dimensional forward time. But the universe folded like one of those origami fortune tellers that little kids make. It reversed, and folded inside out. The walking nurse went backwards a bit. I went a fraction of a second back in time and it hurt. I was sucked backwards with gravity from the other direction and managed to make it back to the forest. I’d paid a price for it though, the demon was enraged and there was now a strong suction coming from the scary side.

But I had figured out the codex, the key. My niece had given it to me. You have to choose the pictures with your heart, your instinct, rather than rational mind and logic. From there forward the double image puzzle was much easier, I didn’t make many mistakes and the ones I made were relatively small ones. I began to get accustomed and almost bored of this place, it was about 6 hours by now. Coincidently, my stepdad would be coming into town within a couple of hours and he would be able to come to the ER. The nurses left a message on his machine.

I began to feel around and explore this inner world. I knew I couldn’t look directly at the blue tunnel but I sort of felt what it felt like; just like a vacuum sucking on an intangible part in your sternum. I tried to look through the fluid walls of the forward tunnel but I was unable to focus on what was out there, it looked like distorted glass or water of what was really there, only stretched out in tunnel vision. The nursing triage was still infinity away. I became less afraid if the forest and walked towards it. I saw a demon dog trying to fight the good, but the good was unconditional and shone on the dog and made it have less motivation to swipe and claw; it couldn’t get a grip on the intangible sunrays anyway, they were just warmth and love and peace. It exhausted itself and laid down for a nap. Good will always win over evil because of this.

The Doctor came in and we talked as she examined me and we talked about my horse and she said even though I’m too sick to ride now, I should keep him because he represents hope. My stepfather showed up and the hallucinations dissipated a bit, but I had the hallucinations and the pull from death for a good two weeks. I was very sick and weak.

I marked down what I could remember in the chatroom, and my friends were happy to know that I’d made it. Two strange things happened from this; I got an Astigmatism from staring far for such a long time, far sighted, and had to get my first pair of glasses ever; and Pteri had broken a blood feather but luckily didn’t bleed out. “You just had something like a bad acid trip” my stepdad said, immediately skeptical and dismissive of my experience.

Later I’ll talk about the fallout from the experience.